Practical guide · November 8, 2026
Why an image gets cropped in the print dialog
The right size can still have the wrong shape.
Compare aspect ratios first
A 3600 × 2400 image has a ratio of 1.5, or 3:2. A 10 × 8 inch print has a ratio of 1.25, or 5:4. Filling the second rectangle with the whole first rectangle requires cropping, stretching or borders. Changing the PPI does not change the aspect ratio.
Fit preserves the whole picture
Fit a 3:2 image into a 10 × 8 inch area and it can occupy 10 × 6.67 inches. About 1.33 inches of vertical space remains in total. The exact borders depend on centering and printable margins. Choose fit when keeping all edges is more important than covering all the paper.
Fill uses a crop
To make a 5:4 crop while keeping the original 2400-pixel height, retain 3000 pixels of width. At 300 PPI that crop becomes 10 × 8 inches. The original 3600-pixel width loses 600 pixels overall. Keep important faces, text and product edges away from the crop boundary.
Recheck after changing the output
Select paper size and orientation before reviewing the final preview. Borderless mode may enlarge the image slightly. Non-printable margins may shrink it. This calculator reports uncropped dimensions at a chosen PPI; any crop, resampling or later print-dialog scaling needs a fresh check.